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In this work, we discuss the resonance states of a quantum particle in a periodic potential plus static force. Originally this problem was formulated for a crystalline electron subject to the static electric field and is known nowadays as the Wannier-Stark problem. We describe a novel approach to the Wannier-Stark problem developed in recent years. This approach allows to compute the complex energy spectrum of a Wannier-Stark system as the poles of a rigorously constructed scattering matrix and, in this sense, solves the Wannier-Stark problem without any approximation. The suggested method is very efficient from the numerical point of view and has proven to be a powerful analytic tool for Wannier-Stark resonances appearing in different physical systems like optical or semiconductor superlattices.

The paper studies the effect of a weak periodic driving on metastable Wannier-Stark states. The decay rate of the ground Wannier-Stark states as a continuous function of the driving frequency is calculated numerically. The theoretical results are compared with experimental data of Wilkinson et at. [Phys.Rev.Lett.76, 4512 (1996)] obtained for cold sodium atoms in an accelerated optical lattice.

We consider N coupled linear oscillators with time-dependent coecients. An exact complex amplitude - real phase decomposition of the oscillatory motion is constructed. This decomposition is further used to derive N exact constants of motion which generalise the so-called Ermakov-Lewis invariant of a single oscillator. In the Floquet problem of periodic oscillator coecients we discuss the existence of periodic complex amplitude functions in terms of existing Floquet solutions.

A new method for calculating Stark resonances is presented and applied for illustration to the simple case of a one-particle, one-dimensional model Hamiltonian. The method is applicable for weak and strong dc fields. The only need, also for the case of many particles in multi-dimensional space, are either the short time evolution matrix elements or the eigenvalues and Fourier components of the eigenfunctions of the field-free Hamiltonian.

The quasienergy spectrum of a periodically driven quantum system is constructed from classical dynamics by means of the semiclassical initial value representation using coherent states. For the first time, this method is applied to explicitly time dependent systems. For an anharmonic oscillator system with mixed chaotic and regular classical dynamics, the entire quantum spectrum (both regular and chaotic states) is reproduced semiclassically with surprising accuracy. In particular, the method is capable to account for the very small tunneling splittings.

We present a complete derivation of the semiclassical limit of the coherent state propagator in one dimension, starting from path integrals in phase space. We show that the arbitrariness in the path integral representation, which follows from the overcompleteness of the coherent states, results in many different semiclassical limits. We explicitly derive two possible semiclassical formulae for the propagator, we suggest a third one, and we discuss their relationships. We also derive an initial value representation for the semiclassical propagator, based on an initial gaussian wavepacket. It turns out to be related to, but different from, Heller's thawed gaussian approximation. It is very different from the Herman - Kluk formula, which is not a correct semiclassical limit. We point out errors in two derivations of the latter. Finally we show how the semiclassical coherent state propagators lead to WKB-type quantization rules and to approximations for the Husimi distributions of stationary states.

For periodically driven systems, quantum tunneling between classical resonant stability islands in phase space separated by invariant KAM curves or chaotic regions manifests itself by oscillatory motion of wave packets centered on such an island, by multiplet splittings of the quasienergy spectrum, and by phase space localisation of the quasienergy states on symmetry related ,ux tubes. Qualitatively di,erent types of classical resonant island formation | due to discrete symmetries of the system | and their quantum implications are analysed by a (uniform) semiclassical theory. The results are illustrated by a numerical study of a driven non-harmonic oscillator.

The Filter-Diagonalization Method is applied to time periodic Hamiltonians and used to find selectively the regular and chaotic quasienergies of a driven 2D rotor. The use of N cross-correlation probability amplitudes enables a selective calculation of the quasienergies from short time propagation to the time T (N). Compared to the propagation time T (1) which is required for resolving the quasienergy spectrum with the same accuracy from auto-correlation calculations, the cross-correlation time T (N) is shorter by the factor N , that is T (1) = N T (N).

The Filter-Diagonalization Method is used to ,nd the broad and even overlapping resonances of a 1D Hamiltonian used before as a test model for new resonance theories and computational methods. It is found that the use of several complex-scaled cross-correlation probability amplitudes from short time propagation enables the calculation of broad overlapping resonances, which can not be resolved from the amplitude of a single complex-scaled autocorrelation calculation.